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How much do you know about Columbia? For example, what ties does Columbia have to the Declaration of Independence? Or the Harlem Renaissance? How about the 2004 Democratic National Convention? Check out our featured fact.

Featured Fact

Q: Which prominent Columbian was a Republican Party candidate for the presidency and the vice presidency?

Nicholas Murray Butler (Columbia College 1882, PhD 1884), Columbia's president from 1902 to 1945, was an active Republican who sought the party's presidential nomination in 1920. He lost to Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio.

Eight years earlier, in 1912, Butler became the party's vice-presidential candidate when incumbent vice president James S. Sherman died five days after the election. Butler's selection did not matter; the Republican ticket headed by President William H. Taft received eight electoral votes in the three-way race also contested by former president Theodore Roosevelt (Law 1880–82) and won by New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson.

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